Sport

Talks on North Korea's abductees stall

Updated
May 09, 2013 15:58:00

While North Korean missile launches, nuclear tests, and threats of war have dominated headlines, many Japanese families are concerned their fight to have relatives who were kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970s and 80s returned, has been forgotten.

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: The United Nations has appointed the former High Court Justice Michael Kirby to lead a commission into human rights abuses in North Korea.

North Korea is accused of torturing its own citizens and running a network of prison camps holding around 200,000 people. It's also accused of abducting dozens, possibly hundreds of Japanese citizens in a state-run kidnapping campaign in the 1970s and '80s.

Talks aimed at finding out what happened to those who are still unaccounted for have stalled.

In an exclusive interview with Lateline, one Japanese man who was abducted and held captive in North Korea for 24 years says he has real fears for those left behind in the world's most isolated state, fears that they have been forgotten.

MARK WILLACY, REPORTER: For Kaoru Hasuike, this windswept beach in north-west Japan is the edge of the world, the very place he vanished from 35 years ago.

KAORU KASUIKE, JAPANESE ABDUCTEE (voiceover translation): My dreams and hopes in life were sliced to pieces. Abduction is an act that cuts you off from all your ties. I spent 24 years as a captive in North Korea, living under constant surveillance.

MARK WILLACY: It was here on this beach on a sticky summer evening in 1978 that a group of North Korean agents sprang their trap.

KAORU KASUIKE (voiceover translation): It was really just a normal day. As usual, my girlfriend and I met in town very close from here, and we said, "OK, where should we go?" We were on a date, so we decided to go to the beach.

MARK WILLACY: 20-year-old Kaoru Hasuike and his girlfriend were sitting on the sand when a man approached asking for a light. It was then the man's accomplices pounced from behind, tied them up and bundled them onto a waiting boat.

KAORU KASUIKE (voiceover translation): At first my girlfriend and I thought it was like a movie where gangsters kidnap you for human trafficking. I never dreamed foreign agents would enter Japan and abduct us.

MARK WILLACY: North Korea admits to abducting 13 Japanese, snatching them from city streets and from remote beaches like this. But the real figure could be in the hundreds, with many unexplained disappearances, especially up here in Japan's remote north-west.

The despotic Kim regime in Pyongyang used these abductees to translate documents and to help train their spies to speak and act Japanese, spies like Kim Hyun-hee.

In an exclusive interview with the ABC in Seoul last month, the former North Korean agent explained how she was taught by one of the Japanese kidnap victims.

KIM HYUN-HEE, FORMER NORTH KOREAN SPY (voiceover translation): I was trained in the Japanese language by the abductee, Yuko Takeuchi. She was a assigned to me and I lived with her. She trained me to become Japanese.

MARK WILLACY: Kim Hyun-Hee would later employ those skills to impersonate a Japanese woman, using her cover to blow up a South Korean airliner, killing all 115 people on board.

It's believed Megumi Yokota was also used to trained to use North Korean spies. The 13-year-old was snatched off the street of her seaside village in north-west Japan in 1977. She was walking home from badminton practice at school when North Korean agents bundled her away. It's suspected that Megumi was taken down to the beach, dragged on to a boat and taken to North Korea.

SAKIE YOKOTA, MOTHER OF ABDUCTEE (voiceover translation): We didn't have a clue what had happened to Megumi for 20 years. No body was found and the police didn't know what had happened to her. But then we were told there was information our daughter may have been abducted to North Korea.

MARK WILLACY: The Yokotas have been campaigning ever since to have their daughter returned to them. North Korea has admitted that its agents kidnapped Megumi Yokota, but the regime insists she died 20 years ago. However, DNA tests on cremated remains sent to Japan suggest that they don't belong to Megumi Yokota.

SAKIE YOKOTA (voiceover translation): We cannot believe our daughter is dead. We believe she's alive. The remains sent over by North Korea were bogus. The DNA test made that clear.

MARK WILLACY: What is also clear is that life in North Korea, even for the Japanese abductees, was tough. Forced to translate Japanese books and newspapers for the regime, Kaoru Hasuike was also forced to live through the horrific famine of the 1990s when hundreds of thousands starved to death.

But he was also allowed to marry his girlfriend who was kidnapped with him. They would have two children.

KAORU KASUIKE (voiceover translation): After the children were born, I felt I had a responsibility as a parent. I had to do everything I could for the children. If I was always worrying about returning to Japan, I wouldn't be able to focus on raising the children. So I made up my mind that I had no choice but to live in North Korea. So I did for 24 years.

MARK WILLACY: In 2002, with North Korea seeking closer ties and aid from Japan, Kaoru Hasuike and his wife were allowed to return home for a brief visit, but they had to leave their children behind. Once in Japan, they made the fateful decision not to go back.

KAORU KASUIKE (voiceover translation): The biggest question was: will North Korea return the children? The Japanese Government told us that they would do their best and I thought it might take time, but the children would come home. So we made the decision to stay in Japan. It was nearly a year and a half before they were allowed to join u and it was the hardest time in my life.

MARK WILLACY: Others have been waiting much longer for their children to be returned to them. It's now been 36 years since Megumi Yokota disappeared from her parents' lives.

SAKIE YOKOTA (voiceover translation): I could only bring up Megumi for 13 years, but I am sure she learnt much from me. I believe that right now she's using what she learnt to get through life. I am sure she will come back. I believe that day will come.

MARK WILLACY: But recent North Korean rocket launches, nuclear tests and frenzied threats of war have meant the abduction issue has slipped off the radar.

SHIGERU YOKOTA, FATHER OF ABDUCTEE (voiceover translation): The postponed talks have never resumed. According to reports, North Korea asked Japan to restart the negotiations on the abduction issue at the end of last year. Now Japan says it won't resume the talks.

KAORU KASUIKE (voiceover translation): Because of the nuclear and missile tests, relations have deteriorated all round. North Korea is now very isolated internationally. Unless tensions are eased, I'm very concerned the abductees will be forgotten.